Browse 10Minutes from PwC

Give us just 10 minutes of your time to bring you usable information on a relevant topic. We promise not to waste a minute of it. And if you want more, issues of 10Minutes will often be backed up by longer treatments, available from this Web site and in print. Note too, below: there’s an iPhone-iPad app for 10Minutes. Additionally, you can explore all of PwC's publications covering current business issues and industry trends.

Authors John Sviokla and Mitch Cohen identify five habits of mind that allow self-made billionaires to create value on a massive scale—habits that are in direct conflict with the traits and practices most businesses value and promote in their employees.

Ever wonder why some companies consistently deliver while others disappoint? Faced with the same market, stocked with similar talent, one organization flourishes, while the other flounders. By understanding what makes your organization tick and where there might be breakdowns to address, you and your employees can truly deliver on your strategic intent.

Investors have been showing increased interest in the correlations between financial performance and sustainability factors like resource scarcity, environmental performance and corporate governance when assessing a company’s future risk and growth opportunities. Is your company ready to respond? This 10Minutes highlights insights and benefits companies can glean into these issues by integrating their thinking to develop a better understanding of impacts to their businesses, allowing them to tell a more holistic value creation story.

After much deliberation, the FASB and IASB are set to release a final global revenue recognition standard in the coming months that will do away with current industry-specific accounting and instead apply a single set of principles to all revenue transactions. Changes to practices, processes and systems could ripple through your business. 10Minutes on revenue recognition provides information about the standard as well as insight into ways in which some companies are preparing for the broader impact.

Data protection and privacy is an urgent issue for both consumers and businesses. As customers increasingly worry whether their personal information is secure and used appropriately, companies are also concerned about protecting data and their brand. This 10Minutes highlights the importance of viewing consumer privacy from more than just a compliance lens and developing a strategy and action plan that will help businesses lead on data privacy by building customer trust and enhancing their brand.

Businesses depend on service providers to handle confidential data, run essential business processes, and manage critical technology. This can leave businesses vulnerable to service provider breakdowns. The result can be the providers’ clients violating regulations and even losing customer trust. Yet many businesses may know less than they realize about their service providers’ controls. This 10Minutes discusses how SOC 2 and SOC 3 reports can give businesses the picture they need to have solid confidence in their service providers.

It’s an opportunity hidden in plain sight. In 10Minutes on transforming the tax function, we discuss how the tax function is often overlooked as an area for improvement, unlike more obvious choices such as supply chain or business services. However, shining a light on the tax group can reveal untapped opportunities where changes in technology, process, people, and data can lead to benefits for the broader business.

New research shows that high-performing supply chains can achieve sales and revenue growth while managing costs. That sounds like a tall order, but there are things you can do now to manage your supply chain as a strategic asset to boost performance and profitability. This 10Minutes highlights how the supply chain can move your business strategy forward and set you apart from the competition.

Pharmaceutical companies stand ready to be tested in a world where a drug’s success is more closely tied to its performance. The challenges mount with competition from generics and growing pressure to reduce costs. Now, insurers and integrated providers are driven by models that reward health outcomes and cost savings. For success, drug makers are exploring real-world evidence, new payment models, and the right partnerships.

Whistleblower reform is having significant impact. The SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower has one full year of operation under its belt, and with it 3,001 tips and two awards to date. Leading companies are looking closely at the Office’s first-year report and drawing lessons for building stronger ethics and compliance programs. They’re also considering what it takes to create a highly ethical culture. This 10Minutes highlights the importance of having an ethical culture at the workplace.

Eco-efficiency can reduce costs for your company. And there are broader benefits, too: a stronger brand, greater productivity, and mitigated risk. Still, opportunities to save money while reducing your company’s use of energy, transportation fuel, waste, water, forest products or chemicals are often short-changed. Why? It’s most likely due to overlooked-but-valuable information.

After three years of outreach and deliberation, the IASB and FASB recently issued a revised proposal to overhaul the rules on accounting for leases, a move that could significantly boost US companies' reported debt.

10Minutes on conflict minerals provides insight into the strategic benefits and risks companies will want to focus on as they comply with the SEC's conflict minerals rule. The rule is effective for 2013 calendar year operations, so regardless of whether companies view conflict minerals as a supply chain opportunity, risk to their brand or another regulatory to-do, they should act now to prepare.

Consumer-packaged goods (CPG) companies, retailers, and their business partners often tout the ways they put customers at the center of their strategies. But while many companies do a good job of understanding their customers, perhaps not as many create demand by coordinating across marketing, sales, and innovation—functions and activities that now encompass the demand chain. This 10Minutes explores ways companies can capitalize on knowing their customer with demand functions pulling in the same direction.

This 10Minutes discusses why cybersecurity is more than an IT challenge—it’s a business imperative. New technologies, well-funded and determined adversaries, and interconnected business ecosystems have combined to increase your company’s exposure to cyberattacks. Critical digital assets are being targeted and the potential impact to your business has never been greater. In order to sufficiently protect the business, future cash flows, and shareholder value, your approach to cybersecurity must keep pace.

What does a customer-centered organization look like? What investments are needed to take you there, and what might that journey look like? This 10Minutes discusses these questions and how companies who focus on creating a customer-centered organization may reap real dividends.

Volatility has become a fact of life in today’s business landscape. Yet, after years of global expansion, many companies’ supply chains are brittle, unable to respond to frequent fluctuations in demand and supply. This 10Minutes explores strategies companies can deploy to make their supply chains more agile and adaptable.

In 2013, company leaders are looking for value creation from their operations. To achieve this goal, organizations are moving beyond shared services and outsourcing to a Global Business Services (GBS) model. GBS helps provide those intangibles by focusing on customer needs and business strategy first and foremost.

For non-financial services companies, regulations introduced by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and Basel III will result in significant changes to the derivatives market. Every aspect of a corporation using derivative to manage risk will ultimately be affected—from risk strategies and corporate funding to operations and accounting. This 10Minutes provides insight on the impacts of new regulation on corporate entities and what those entities need to do now in order to meet impending reform deadlines and ensure they're well equipped to manage increased costs and compliance responsibilities.

Talent continues to top the list of executive concerns. Company leaders are focusing on how talent can help them achieve the following four strategic priorities: power growth, realize ROI, manage risk, and enable transformation.

Signs point to a potential surge in domestic manufacturing, and US companies are carefully watching seven key factors that are impacting the trend. They also need to consider what a potential move or expansion of manufacturing facilities to the US could mean for all aspects of their business.

As Europe continues to grapple with sovereign debt problems, austerity measures, and recession, the Eurozone is changing and will likely emerge from the ongoing crisis looking quite different from the one we know today. Because the world is so interconnected, virtually every company will be affected and needs to figure out the impact on their companies worldwide - from strategy and operations to execution - and start preparing now.

In this edition of 10Minutes we talk to leading edge companies about what is driving new mobility patterns and their current talent mobility practices, both from a short and long-term strategy perspective.

Audit committees, management, and auditors work together to meet the information needs of the capital markets and to ensure quality audits and financial reporting. The leading practices in this 10Minutes may help audit committees continue to improve their oversight of auditors and management, thereby enhancing the quality of audits and financial reporting.

The best disaster survival manual may be obsolete if it doesn’t anticipate major disruptions to the supply chain or at outsourced operations. As a result, business continuity management programs are being designed to continually assess— as well as counter—risks stemming from the interdependencies integral to running a business.